Joanna Holbrook

Joanna started her career in GSK R&D, working for seven years in the UK bioinformatics department, processing the integrating 'omic data for drug target identification and validation mostly focussing on neurological disease, and then for three years in GSK USA Oncology R&D working on biomarkers for targeted therapies. She then left GSK and the USA for Singapore and built an academic group in A*STAR Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences. Her group focused on epigenomic trackers of complex disease, especially the interaction of genetic, environmental and disease states in shaping the human epigenome. Her work in Singapore encompassed set-up of observational and interventional cohorts, biobanking, clinical databases, production, processing and analysis of biosample 'omic profiles and multiple industrial collaborations. Moving back to the UK five years later, she took up a professorship at the University of Southampton, still working on epigenomics and also integration of electronic health record data to clinical cohorts. Most recently she has been VP of Translational Medicine at BenevolentAI, a fast growing British Biotech, where she initiated and led integration of 'omic data into a large biomedical knowledge graph and machine learning approaches to analyses of patient-level data for precision medicine.